by Allen Wold
"Who did?"
"The raiders. All of a sudden, there they were. We never saw them at all until they were within optical range. They blew out our engines, and all the shuttle bays. Then they landed, near where you went in, and destroyed the shuttle there. We can't move."
Part Six
1
For a moment Rikard couldn't believe what he had just heard, and apparently neither could Sukiro, who was just breathing deeply.
"What the hell happened?" she said at last.
"I don't know," Brenner answered. "We didn't even get a chance to return fire."
"Completely sensor-transparent," Sukiro muttered. "We've got to take that ship intact. How many-casualties?"
"The entire engineering section. We're drifting out of orbit, but we're not going to crash."
"All right," Sukiro said. "How many personal propulsion units do you have?"
"Enough for everybody on board."
"Good. I want every goon into one and down here on the double, and have them bring down an emergency com-link field-node. Use every available optical scanner and keep all weapons fully manned. We'll take out the raiders from inside, and if we can capture a ship we'll come up and get you."
"Be sure and signal when you do, I intend to blast anything that moves."
"You do that. We'll have a beacon set up down here by the time the goons are ready to come out."
She broke contact and started giving instructions to the goons who, in fact, were already starting to rig the beacon. Quickly three telescoping rods were planted on the surface of the station, their top ends linked together. The beacon was attached at the top, and several emergency power packs were connected together and to the beacon by a long cable and set on the ground between the tripod's feet. Then the tripod was extended to its full height, something over ten meters.
"Maybe we should call in some help," Rikard said to Sukiro.
"We'll have thirty goons here inside of twenty minutes."
"I mean another ship."
"If we can take the raiders' ship, we'll be just fine."
"As long as it isn't booby-trapped, or we don't damage it when we take it—if we can locate it at all."
Sukiro turned to look at him. It was not easy to make out her expression through the faceplate of her helmet.
"I'm not used to calling for help," she said. Her voice was tight. She was silent for a long moment, then turned away. "But I think you're right. A lot of good it will do us. It'll take a gunship four days to get here from Shentary."
"Then we'll present them with a victory. And besides, we'll need more than one ship to carry all those prisoners and the brains."
"I guess you've got a point," Sukiro said, then, "Wait a minute, we've got some trouble downstairs."
"What's happening?"
"Good God, the raiders have come. Is that damn beacon rigged yet? We've got to get below!"
One of the goons turned from where he or she was adjusting a jury-rigged control panel. Rikard couldn't hear that end of the conversation, but almost at once Sukiro said, "Good, let's go."
As they hurried into the lock Rikard said, "I can't hear anything."
"Switch to Channel C," Sukiro told him, then, "I've lost them too. Somebody said something about raiders, then they moved out of range."
The last goon into the lock ran around the catwalk to the back, even as the others started descending the ramp, and triggered the lock closing mechanism, then jumped off the ledge to join the others.
"How will they get in?" Rikard asked as they spiraled downward.
"The best way they can," Sukiro answered.
They came into the vestibule. It was empty, but dust was stirred up everywhere and still hung in the air. Everybody cracked their helmets, the only way they could communicate with each other until the corn-link field-node came down. Rikard removed his outer gloves too, so that he could complete the connection between his hand and his gun. And now he could hear, somewhere off in the distance, the sounds of blaster-fire.
The room beyond showed blaster damage. One of the other two irises was blown completely away. "They've got heavier weapons," Sukiro said.
They quickly went from room to room, following the trail of damage—smoked walls, pocks and holes in walls and cabinets, blasted tables, still burning electronics once concealed behind wall panels. The sounds of shooting got louder, and they hurried in the direction from which the noise was coming.
In the next room they found bodies, three pirates—or maybe four, it was hard to tell the way the blaster shots had blown them apart. The room beyond was empty except for damaged and destroyed Tschagan "furniture," and beyond that, three more pirates lay dead, strung out along the corridor. An iris at the far end was standing open, blocked by part of another body.
"On the double," Sukiro commanded, and the goons ran toward the open iris. The first there stopped short and started shooting through the door. By the time Rikard got there, right behind Sukiro, the battle on the other side had turned to a rout. They had come on the pirates from behind, and the floor of the large room was littered with a dozen still smoking corpses. The survivors had already fled.
There were four other irises to choose from. "Sukiro here," she shouted, "where are you?"
Three blaster shots in rapid succession gave the signal and the direction, the far door on the left. Sukiro's group hurried through it into a room where the pirates were just leaving. There was an exchange of fire, two pirates fell dead. But in the next room Hornower was hit and disabled, as the now fleeing pirates raced away through side exits. In the room beyond they found Choi with his helmet and head blown off.
"We're coming through," Sukiro shouted.
"Watch your fire," someone yelled back.
They passed through an iris into a long corridor. The remaining goons were two hundred meters or so down it. There were three dead pirates on the floor in front of them.
For just an instant it seemed to Rikard that the two groups of police would fire on each other, but recognition was swift. The goons rejoined in the middle of the corridor.
"At least," Sukiro said, "there were no Vaashka warriors with them."
"I don't think that was their main party," Falyn said. "There were only about fifty of them, and they must have sent people out in other directions."
"Let's get back outside," Rikard suggested. "We've got reinforcements coming, and we can pick any pirates off as they come out the hatch."
"That's a damn good idea," Sukiro agreed.
But then irises all up and down the corridor snapped open, just long enough for the raiders on the other side to fire once quickly. Most of the unaimed shots just pocked the wall, but a few passed through the group. There was no chance for return fire.
"Get down," Denny said, and blasted away the nearest iris. Sukiro took out another, beyond which Rikard could see pirates, taken by surprise. The goons facing the two blasted portals opened fire as Denny and Sukiro opened a couple more. Sukiro's weapon was powerful enough that the pirates on the other side of the iris were knocked backward by the blaster's blow-through.
They started back toward the airlock but as they passed more irises they snapped open, admitting more enemy fire. Denny and Sukiro did what they could to remove this advantage, but there were more pirates behind them now, and the iris ahead, though Sukiro had blown it away, let pirates in concealment in the room beyond fire with impunity.
"In here," Sukiro said, and led them into a side room. She blew out the far iris as they entered, Denny blew away those on either side, and the goons gathered in the center of the room, facing outward, with Rikard, Ming and Grayshard, and Endark Droagn crouching down in the middle of the group.
"We'll take it one room at a time," Sukiro said.
And then Rikard felt the first whisper of a Vaashka attack. "Seal up!" he shouted. His helmet wasn't adequate protection, even with the face-plate closed, so he groped in the space suit pack on his back, where he'd stowed the fragment of Gray-shard's cl
othing he'd been using as a shield.
"Seal up!" the noncoms shouted even as he did, doing as they commanded. The goons responded quickly, but Gerandine, Bri-sabane, and Valencis, all of whose suits were fractured, slumped to the deck.
Rikard struggled against the oppression of the Vaashka attack as he dragged the shielding material from the pack and wrapped it around his head. The relief was immediate. But now every goon who's armor had been breached in combat was lying on the deck, facedown or with their arms over their heads. They could not defend themselves from the Vaashka warriors.
~Don't give up so quickly,~ Droagn said. He coiled himself up and picked up four goons, one under each arm. ~Take the easy way out,~ he went on, and slithered toward the far side of the room—away from the hatch.
Sukiro could not hear the Ahmear, but she understood what he was doing. "Pull back," she ordered, and the goons who were able assisted their stricken comrades away from the raiders.
That left only Rikard and Sukiro to cover their retreat. Together they backed out the way the others had gone. Sukiro's powerful blaster fired methodically at any movement in the room beyond. Rikard gripped his weapon, and as time slowed, picked his targets carefully. He felt Sukiro's hand on his shoulder, guiding him backward.
The goons that could still fire did so, the blaster bolts passing frighteningly close to Rikard and Sukiro. It helped.
As they retreated, they were able to make each shot count. Sukiro's blaster did more damage, but Rikard never missed. He backed as quickly as he could, feeling as though he were moving in slow motion under the influence of his time contraction. Then his .75 clicked empty. It seemed to take forever to take a fresh clip out of his belt and slip it into the weapon's butt.
They retreated as fast as they could. Rikard paid no attention to anything but the occasional glimpse of a raider coming into view. He only fired when he was able to take aim, many times he had to let a target go because it would take even him too long to bring his weapon to bear. Once he nearly fell when, backing through an iris, he stepped on Petersin's body.
His head and neck were protected from the Vaashka attack by Grayshard's clothing, but not his face. A Vaashka warrior, several rooms away, appeared momentarily right in front of him and he felt himself cringing. Sukiro's blaster fire made the Vaashka, riding its two zombies, duck back.
Rikard tried to keep pace with the major, even so, but the Vaashka effect was increasing. He wanted to stop, to sit down, to hide under a table, or inside a cabinet. Even with his accelerated senses, the effect was almost overwhelming.
But then the thought came to him, vague, half nightmare, why not turn that effect to his advantage, go ahead, slow down, if he looked at things in a certain way, the Vaashka attack augmented his time sense instead of countering it.
He let the feeling take hold of him, and now he seemed to be floating, backwards, watching the achingly slow movement of his enemies. There were so many of them. He fired, watched a pirate jerk backward as the heavy slug slammed through his chest, even as he was picking another target. He fired again as the spot of his sight entered the central circle of his target, and moved the gun away before the bullet had traveled half the distance.
He lost track of everything except aiming, shooting, and reloading. He continued to back away from the still advancing raiders, and subliminally became aware that there were fewer and fewer blaster shots coming from behind him. And then the inevitable happened. He reached for a fresh clip, even as he was squeezing off the last shot in his gun, and his hand found nothing at his belt. He was out of ammunition.
For an instant of time that seemed to go on forever, but that probably lasted less than a second, he froze in place. Deprived of his only meaningful activity, his mind went blank. He watched, though he did not care, as a raider carefully aimed at him and fired, and only at the last instant twitched aside. The bolt hummed past his head, the charge of hydrogen plasma crisping his hair.
He twisted in place, turned one hundred eighty degrees, started to run after his companions. His head was now fully shielded from the Vaashka attack. For a moment he thought he was alone, then he saw Sukiro, standing half in an iris, firing past him at the enemies now behind him. He rocked his weapon back in his hand so that the connection between his special glove and the gun butt was broken. His time sense returned to normal, so quickly that he seemed to be flying. He ran for the door and jumped through it even as Sukiro stepped out of the way. The iris closed, then fused as blaster shots struck it from the other side.
Sukiro grabbed his arm as he passed, and steered him toward a side entrance. As they ducked through she let go his arm and took a blaster from her holster and handed it to him. He looked at the weapon as they ran through the room. It was a regulation goon blaster. Then he holstered his .75 and took the police weapon in his right hand. He had never fired a blaster before.
They hit another iris at a full run. Or rather, they would have hit it had not the mechanism been designed for even faster approaches than that. Rikard had the longer reach, his hand was stretched out in front of him, aiming at the latch-plate. He didn't even feel it. The iris snapped open, they were through, and it snapped shut behind them again.
The room they were now in was larger, and as they hurried toward the far wall an iris snapped on their right and a goon stepped through.
"This way," Fresno shouted, and they changed direction in midstride. Fresno thought to keep the iris open for them, but stepped back when he saw they had no intention of slowing down. The iris snapped closed, but again, when Rikard reached out his hand for the latch-plate, it opened without causing them a half second's loss of motion. As it was, they nearly bowled Fresno over as they came through into a corridor.
"Which way?" Sukiro asked as they paused to let Fresno recover himself—a mere second's wait. The goon pointed to a ramp, at one side of the corridor, leading down. They ran again, for a moment leaving Fresno behind. The goon's power armor caught him up again quickly, and had Rikard had power assist they could have gone faster. "Don't stop at the doors," Sukiro said as they raced down the ramp. "Just hit the latch-plate on the run."
They came to the bottom of the ramp and raced along a corridor to where it elled. Taking Sukiro's instructions literally, Fresno charged through an iris at the corner. Snap, snap. Sukiro and Rikard came to it side by side. Snap, snap. Fresno was still ahead, going toward another door. They followed, through two more rooms, then into another corridor at the far end of which they could see severalfof their companions, in pairs, the whole helping the wounded.
They ran through two more rooms and another corridor, and finally caught up with the rest of the platoon in a short, two-level arcade, with a large, cube-shaped object in the center. Their relief at being together again was short-lived. No sooner had they stopped to take stock than irises on all levels and both sides snapped open to admit raider blaster-fire. Aside from the cube, only two meters on a side, in the center of the arcade, there was no cover, and at that the cube protected only one side.
Endark Droagn was the first to recover from the surprise of this attack. He dropped the goons he was still carrying and took their blaster, one in each hand. Maybe there was something in the way his eyes were constructed that allowed him to aim them all in different directions, but whatever it was, each of his shots was good, either hitting a raider in a doorway or blasting an iris. ~Move that thing aside,~ he shouted.
For a moment no one understood, then Falyn, Charney, and Jasime put their shoulders to the cube and pushed. Other floor objects had been too massive to move, in spite of their sometimes small size, but this one was different. It moved so easily that the three nearly fell on their faces.
Underneath the cube was a service hatch. Droagn lurched toward it, dropped one of the blasters, reached down and opened the hatch, even as he fired with his other three hands. Then he dropped the guns, grabbed a couple of the nearest still disabled goons, and dove down the hatch head first. The rest of the party, firing for cov
er and at least partially protected by the cube, quickly followed.
Again Rikard and Sukiro were the last to enter the descending ramp. Rikard scooped up one of the dropped blasters as he entered the service hatch. He and Sukiro backed down, as rapidly as they could, firing with both hands, and when the first of the raiders appeared in the opening above them, blew them away. The ramp spiraled until the curve of the ramp concealed them from the raiders now in full chase. They continued to back and fired up at me near curve of the ramp to keep the raiders from following too closely. In turn, the raiders fired blindly down at them and the blow-through from their blaster shots rained superheated gas and molten metal around them.
"All at once," Sukiro said. They each fired their weapons three times in rapid succession, then turned and raced down the ramp after their fellows.
The ramp ended in an octagonal chamber ten meters across. There was nobody there, and the dust on the floor was so churned up that they couldn't tell by which of the other seven doors their party had exited.
"We're sitting ducks," Rikard said.
"Not yet," Sukiro told him. She dashed back to the side by which they had entered and flattened up against the wall between the corner and the door. Rikard saw her plan and went to the opposite side. But now they would hit each other if they fired at people coming out the door. Rikard dropped flat on his face so he could aim upward, and Sukiro did the same.
As she did so, three pirates burst through from the ramp.
Rikard and Sukiro fired and took out all three. A moment later, two more came at full speed, saw their comrades too late, and were blown apart as quickly. The next raider came out simply due to momentum, and fared no better. No more came after that, though they could hear their enemy, on the ramp, muttering and cursing to each other.
And then—Rikard couldn't tell how many—a group of raiders leapt through the door and hit the floor rolling, firing back at Rikard and Sukiro as they did so. Their aim was spoiled by their motion, and was directed toward standing targets, and by the time they saw that Rikard and Sukiro were prone, it was too late, they were gunned down. But another group followed in the same way, spread out, and aimed lower this time while others reached their weapons around the corners of the doorway to fire blindly. Only the fact that Falyn and Glaine suddenly appeared at irises to either side, doubly armed and blasting at every exposed pirate, saved Rikard and Sukiro from destruction. This sudden defense surprised the raiders sufficiently that Rikard and Sukiro were able to kill those Falyn and Glaine missed.
